From James Harkin (Webmaster & Editor of LindseyWilliams.net). Here is a summary of articles of interest from around the world for this week. Please LIKE the Lindsey Williams Online Facebook Page to see stories posted daily regarding the current state of the economy around the world.

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Latest News From November 18, 2016 to November 24, 2016:

We Are Being Set Up For Higher Interest Rates, A Major Recession And A Giant Stock Market Crash

Since Donald Trump’s victory on election night we have seen the worst bond crash in 15 years. Global bond investors have seen trillions of dollars of wealth wiped out since November 8th, and analysts are warning of another tough week ahead. The general consensus in the investing community is that a Trump administration will mean much higher inflation, and as a result investors are already starting to demand higher interest rates. Unfortunately for all of us, history has shown that higher interest rates always cause an economic slowdown. And this makes perfect sense, because economic activity naturally slows down when it becomes more expensive to borrow money. The Obama administration had already set up the next president for a major recession anyway, but now this bond crash threatens to bring it on sooner rather than later.

John Bolton Warns That Obama May Divide The Land Of Israel At The UN Before The Inauguration

Is Barack Obama about to make the most catastrophic decision of his entire presidency? Former UN Ambassador John Bolton is warning that there is “a lot of speculation” over at UN headquarters right now about “resolutions that recognize a Palestinian state or that try and set a boundary for Israel based on the 1967 ceasefire lines”. Of course this would have to happen before the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20th, because Trump has already made it quite clear that he will not support any UN resolution of such nature. Knowing that Trump is about to take office, advocates of the “two state solution” are putting an immense amount of pressure on Obama to support a UN Security Council resolution that would permanently divide the land of Israel while he is still in the White House, and at this moment we do not know what Barack Obama’s final decision will be.

US Pension Crisis: This is How Families Get Squeezed to Bail Out Pension Funds in Chicago

Chicago is another trailblazer. But it’s not alone. Other cities are lining up behind it. Bankruptcy may still be the route to go. But until then, homeowners, renters, drivers, users of phones, etc. – in other words regular families who’re just sitting ducks – are going to get squeezed dry, in order to slow the momentum of the public-employee pension crisis eating up the city’s and the school district’s finances. “Because of a new accounting rule, Chicago now has to report its pension debt on its balance sheet,” explains Truth in Accounting. “As a result, the city’s reported pension debt grew from $8.6 billion in 2014 to $33.8 billion in 2015.”

What’ll Happen to Housing Bubble 2 as Mortgage Rates Jump?

In the few days since the election, we got a flavor of what might happen when the bond market sees hues of inflation, expects the Fed to respond, and suddenly (after years of closing its eyes to it) dreads a tsunami of government deficit spending, on top of the flood of deficit spending already washing over the land. The US government borrowed on average $850 billion per year over the last two fiscal years, in total $1.71 trillion. Very soon, the gross national debt will hit $20 trillion. And with a little help from the next administration’s plans, the annual new debt to be issued by the US government could balloon far beyond $1 trillion a year.

Who’ll Get Hit by Fallout from the $11-Trillion Commercial Property Bubble in the US?

Warnings about the loans, bonds, and commercial-mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) tied to the vast $11-trillion commercial property sector in the US have been hailing down for months. Moody’s Investor Services just warned about the rising delinquency rate of some $360 billion in CMBS it rates. Delinquencies of 60+ days jumped from 4.6% last year to 5.6% in September. Fitch Ratings has been fretting about valuations in the sector, and CMBS, for months. “Valuation and lending trends are not sustainable in the medium term,” it said most recently in its November report. It pinpointed debt backed by apartment buildings as a particular trouble spot. But now it’s also fretting about construction loans, which “experienced the highest loss severity in the last crisis, and we expect a similar trend in the next downturn,” it said.

Jim Rickards Discusses Looming Shut Down of the Entire US Economy

In the following interview, legendary investor Jim Rickards echoes almost verbatim what Peter Schiff and Michael Snyder said recently in a post titled, Peter Schiff: Making America Great Again Will Be Much Harder Than Voters Think. In just a few short minutes, Jim confirms what myself and so many others have been trying to warn our readers about for well over a year now, which is that collapse of the global economic system is imminent. To put things in perspective, consider the fact that Deutsche Bank’s derivative exposure alone, is more than 3x the continent of Europe’s annual GDP, and that’s just one bank.

Now it Begins to Unravel – The Credit Bubble Peak was Marked by “Totally Crazy Lending.”

Debt is good. More debt is better. Funding consumer spending with debt is even better – that’s what economists have been preaching – because the consumed goods and services are gone after having been added to GDP, while the debt, which GDP ignores, remains until it is paid off with future earnings, or until it blows up. Corporations too have gone on a borrowing binge. Unlike consumers, they have no intention of paying off their debts. They issue new debt and use the proceeds to pay off maturing debts. Funding share-buybacks and dividends with debt is ideal. It’s called “unlocking value.” Debt must always grow. For that purpose, the Fed has manipulated interest rates to rock bottom. Actually paying off and reducing debt has the dreadful moniker, bandied about during the Financial Crisis, “deleveraging.” It’s synonymous with “The End of the World.”

2017 Predictions for MSM, Markets and Gold-Gerald Celente

Top trends researcher Gerald Celente started forecasting back in May 2016 that Trump would win. He was spot-on. What are the big trends and predictions in store for 2017? Mr. Celente gives us three of his top predictions coming up in this interview. We start with the mainstream media (MSM) that went all in for Hillary Clinton with actions associated with propaganda and not news. What’s going to happen to the MSM in 2017? Celente, who is Publisher of The Trends Journal, says, “It’s gone, and that is the top story coming out in the next Trends Journal too. . . . We are forecasting that this is the end of daily newspapers. They’ll go down to a couple of days a week. The flipside is more people to USAWatchdog.com and other media. We are not alternative media. They are the alternative media. They are the media that only promotes the establishment. The establishment is Hollywood to the White House to the media, and the people are disgusted with it. This is bigger than a populist movement.”

NuTonomy, a self-driving car startup spun out of MIT and based in Cambridge, Mass., will soon begin testing its autonomous vehicles in Boston. The company, which launched a commercial self-driving pilot in Singapore in August, has been given permission to operate its vehicles in the city’s Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park. NuTonomy, which also recently forged a partnership with Southeast Asia’s homegrown ride-hail player Grab, is moving relatively quickly toward its goal of launching a full-fledged on-demand network of self-driving cars in Singapore by 2018. (We rode in the self-driving car that is now operating in Singapore’s business district.)

FOMC Minutes Confirm Rate Hike Imminent “To Preserve Credibility”

A lot has changed since the November 2nd FOMC statement – most notably the world has suddently become awesome again. The relatively benign statement (and election result) has left rate-hike odds at 100% for December but comment from Fischer and Yellen since have hinted concerns at the need for Trump fiscal spendfest. The main risk going in to the minutes was a dovish tilt for the future, tamping the current ‘nothing can stop us now’ attitude (and we note the dollar leaked lower into the release). But sure enough, The Fed confirmed a rate-hike was approrpoate “relatively soon” and was “important to Fed credibility.”

A few months ago we wrote that the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund was on the verge of collapse after a series of shady real estate investments resulted in massive markdowns of pension assets, the ouster of the fund’s CIO and an FBI raid of it’s largest real estate investment manager (see “Dallas Cops’ Pension Fund Nears Insolvency In Wake Of Shady Real Estate Deals, FBI Raid”). We summed up the fund’s dilemma as follows: ‘The Dallas Police & Fire Pension (DPFP), which covers nearly 10,000 police and firefighters, is on the verge of collapse as its board and the City of Dallas struggle to pitch benefit cuts to save the plan from complete failure. According the the National Real Estate Investor, DPFP was once applauded for it’s “diverse investment portfolio” but turns out it may have all been a fraud as the pension’s former real estate investment manager, CDK Realty Advisors, was raided by the FBI in April 2016 and the fund was subsequently forced to mark down their entire real estate book by 32%. Guess it’s pretty easy to generate good returns if you manage a book of illiquid assets that can be marked at your “discretion”.’

Obama Says He’s Had A Scandal-Free Administration. Here Are 11 of His Scandals.

President Barack Obama—who isn’t going away after he leaves office—just unleashed this massive whopper: “I’m extremely proud of the fact that over 8 years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations.” This is demonstrably false. Obama’s presidency has been mired with numerous scandals that would be blared on the news 24/7 if he were a Republican. But because he’s a Democrat, too many people buy Obama’s argument that his presidency has been scandal-free.

Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has dropped out of the R3 CEV LLC blockchain group. The investment bank was one of nine original members of R3, founded in 2014 to explore the use of the distributed database technology in Wall Street infrastructure. The technology, best known for underpinning the system that trades the virtual currency bitcoin, has garnered increasing attention as a way banks can save billions of dollars and make old-fashioned processes faster and more efficient. But not all blockchain firms are the same, with different banks backing different ventures to exploit the technology. As of Oct. 31, Goldman let its membership lapse in R3, one of the higher profile efforts, but the firm will continue to work with blockchain technology, a spokeswoman for the investment bank said.

The Big Short: is the next financial crisis on its way?

In the Oscar-winning The Big Short, Steve Carell plays the angry Wall Street outsider who predicts (and hugely profits from) the great financial crash of 2007-08. He sees sub-prime mortgages rated triple-A but which, in reality, are junk – and bets billions against the banks holding them. In real life he is Steve Eisman, he is still on Wall Street, and he is still shorting stocks he thinks are going to plummet. And while he’s tight-lipped about which ones (unless you have $1m to spare for him to manage) it is evident he has one major target in mind: continental Europe’s banks – and Italy’s are probably the worst. Why Italy? Because, he says, the banks there are stuffed with “non-performing loans” (NPLs). That’s jargon for loans handed out to companies and households where the borrower has fallen behind with repayments, or is barely paying at all. But the Italian banks have not written off these loans as duds, he says. Instead, billions upon billions are still on the books, written down as worth about 45% to 50% of their original value.

Initial Jobless Claims Collapse To Lowest In 43 Years – The US Economy Fell Into Recession Immediately After

After an ugly October, November has seen two straight weeks of improvements in initial jobless claims (plunging 11.6%, 31k – the most since Jan 2015 – to 235k). This is the lowest initial jobless claims since Nov 1973… The US Economy fell into recession the next month.

UN recommits to combating climate change

Approximately 200 nations on Thursday reaffirmed their commitment to combating climate change enshrined by the Paris Agreement at the annual UN climate conference in Morocco.

This came amid fears that the incoming US administration would backtrack on the deal. A “Marrakesh Action Proclamation” issued at the conference called on member states to boost funding for projects to cope with the effects of climate change. “We call for the highest political commitment to combat climate change, as a matter of urgent priority,” the statement read.

Cash Crisis in India Hitting Gold Sales Hard

The domestic gold market in India is facing an upheaval as traders place an increasing number of bulk, short-term orders on fears Prime Minister Narendra Modi could seriously throttle overseas imports of gold. The traders’ fears stem from Modi’s plan to eliminate so-called black money from India’s monetary system by demonetizing the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. The bills were previously the country’s largest currency denomination. Modi’s hard-line demonetization efforts are meant to root out untaxed funds held in secret by Indian citizens. It’s estimated up to a third of the country’s annual demand (1,000 tons of gold) is paid for with black money. The intent of demonetization was to cut down on corruption by targeting Indians holding “large amounts of undeclared wealth to deposit the money at banks and make their assets official,” according to the L.A. Times.

U.S. economy is running below potential, Chicago Fed gauge shows

A measure of national economic activity improved in October but its less-volatile, three-month average weakened, according to the Chicago Federal Reserve on Monday — one sign that below-potential economic growth could limit Fed aggressiveness with interest-rate hikes. The Chicago Fed national activity index rose to negative 0.08 in October from negative 0.23 in September as factory production, housing and consumer spending, as well as the business orders that make up the index mostly improved; employment had a neutral effect. The October reading still shows U.S. economic growth running below its potential.

The “Trump Effect” Now Versus Later

Peter Schiff recently appeared on Alternative Media Television (AMTV) to discuss the so-called “Trump effect” on the US economy. So far, the stock market has gone through some downs after the president-elect’s surprise win and now back up with the Dow Jones average nearing record highs. There’s also been last week’s bond rout, which sent long-term yields soaring as bond prices dropped. The yield on the 10-Year Treasury saw its largest two-week increase since 2001, up 5.9 basis points to 2.337%. The selloff was driven by “rising inflation expectations and the market’s near-certainty that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December,” according to MarketWatch.

Trump Says He Will Issue Executive Order On First Day In Office Withdrawing U.S. From TPP

In a video message released moments ago by Donald Trump, the President-Elect announced that he has asked his team to develop a list of executive actions for his first day as president and announced that he would issue an executive order on his first day of office, withdrawing the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership, and would issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the TPP, voiding Obama’s “free-trade legacy.” Trump stated that his agenda “will be based on a simple core principle, putting America first… whether it’s producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right her on our great homeland.” He added that he would issue a rule, along the lines of what he proposed during his Gettysburg address, that for every new government regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated, and said that he will direct the labor department to investigate abuses of visa programs.

Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: “Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash”

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered “fake news” within the “serious” financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs? Good times. In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough “A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary”, the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks and their ‘supremacy over the markets and other banks’. The former chief executive officer claimed that the use of negative interest rates and huge positive balance sheets represent ‘weapons of mass destruction’. He calls for an end to the use of negative interest rates.

‘First Brexit, Then Trump and There is More of This to Come!’

Hailing 2016 the year of ‘two big political revolutions’ Nigel Farage said Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are ‘in denial’ over the public’s rejection of the political establishment. Speaking on Fox News, the UKIP leader said Obama and the German Chancellor ‘simply can’t face up to the fact that their worldview has taken an absolute beating in the year of 2016′. He has taken to social media to call 2016 ‘the year of political revolution’ and the ‘underdog’ with the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in America.

Smoking gun emails reveal Blair’s ‘deal in blood’ with George Bush over Iraq war was forged a YEAR before the invasion had even started

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War. The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started. It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

Blairite millionaires, politicians and media tycoons are reportedly plotting to stop Brexit in its tracks, a leaked memo suggests. Virgin Group chief Sir Richard Branson is apparently bankrolling the scheme. A memo leaked to the Independent suggests the plot has been underway for months, with financial backing secured and a potential CEO for the group identified. The newspaper claims the information was found in an email penned by Tony Blair’s former health secretary and right-hand man Alan Milburn.

Blair is back! Former PM announces he is ‘returning to British politics’ because the Tories are ‘screwing up Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn is a nutter’ as he prepares to meet with Theresa May

Tony Blair is hunting for a new office near Westminster as he plots a return to frontline politics to influence the Government’s approach to Brexit. The former prime minister believes the Tories are ‘screwing up Brexit’ and views Jeremy Corbyn is ‘a nutter,’ according to a source who has spoken to Mr Blair. He thinks there’s a ‘massive hole in British politics’ that he can fill. Mr Blair is setting up a new institute that will seek to influence and advise the Brexit process.

This Is Where I Get Off

We began writing on the War on Cash some time ago, when it was still just a theoretical ploy that we believed banks and governments were likely to employ as their economic adventurism continued to unravel. But, in the last year, several countries have, as a part of the War on Cash, begun removing larger bank notes from circulation in order to force people to perform all economic transactions through the banking system, ensuring that the banks would gain total control over the movement of money. Of course, the banks could not admit their true goal to the public. They instead used the governments to claim that the measure was being undertaken to restrict crime (money laundering, drug deals, black marketing, terrorism, etc.).

$100 Billion Chinese-Made City Near Singapore ‘Scares the Hell Out of Everybody’

The landscaped lawns and flowering shrubs of Country Garden Holdings Co.’s huge property showroom in southern Malaysia end abruptly at a small wire fence. Beyond, a desert of dirt stretches into the distance, filled with cranes and piling towers that the Chinese developer is using to build a $100 billion city in the sea. While Chinese home buyers have sent prices soaring from Vancouver to Sydney, in this corner of Southeast Asia it’s China’s developers that are swamping the market, pushing prices lower with a glut of hundreds of thousands of new homes. They’re betting that the city of Johor Bahru, bordering Singapore, will eventually become the next Shenzhen.

Morocco wants to build a new city from scratch—with China’s help

Morocco is working on a $10 billion project with the Chinese group Haite to develop an industrial city that will host some 300,000 locals. The project envisions a large Chinese-style industrial park on the edge of the Mediterranean, built on about 2,500 acres with room to expand up to nearly 5,000 acres. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has been personally involved in the improvement in Moroccan-Chinese ties that preceded the deal. The King met with president Xi of China during an official visit to Beijing this year, which led to the signing of a strategic partnership.

Soros Army Forming Liberal Version Of Judicial Watch

The latest efforts by George Soros to subvert President-elect Donald Trump involve taking a page out of the conservative playbook. Soros and his allies have reportedly discussed launching a liberal version of the government transparency group Judicial Watch, which Politico reports “spent much of the past eight years as a thorn in the Obama administration’s side filing legal petitions under the Freedom of Information Act.”

Obama and Angela Merkel Blame Internet and Social Media for Disrupting Globalism

President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are blaming the internet for disrupting the forces of globalism, suggesting that technology is making it more difficult to unite people behind a common purpose. “Because of the internet and communications, the clash of cultures is much more direct,” Obama said during a press conference on his trip to Berlin. “People feel, I think, less certain about their identity. Less certain about economic security.”

REVEALED: The Real Fake News List

We’ve seen the make-shift “fake news” list created by a leftist feminist professor. Well, another fake news list has been revealed and this one holds a lot more water. This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied us into multiple bogus wars. These are the news sources that told us “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They tell us in a never-ending loop that “The economy is in great shape!”

Are You Prepared For The Unwinding Of The Biggest Bubble In History?

With the Thanksgiving Day holiday on Thursday of this week, are you prepared for the unwinding of the biggest bubble in history? Here is a portion of what Peter Boockvar wrote today as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness: I want to start the week by saying I believe ‘secular stagnation’ is bulls**t. As a believer in free trade and comparative advantage and thus with hopes that no trade battles take place in the next 4 years, I want to reiterate my optimism over the potential liberation of the US economy via lower and more competitive tax rates and an easing of the regulatory strait jacket all around the economy. This said, before we get to that economically better place (which we no doubt will I believe) I can’t help but be on alert about what the implications are of an unwinding of the biggest bubble ever created, that of credit via the helping hands of our central bankers…

EURO PLUNGE: Single currency could ‘COLLAPSE’ against dollar amid record losing streak

THE euro has plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since December 2015, as experts warned the currency could collapse next week amid concerns for the eurozone economy. Investors have frantically dumped the single currency over 10 consecutive trading sessions – the worst performance since the euro was introduced in 1999. Head of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi failed to ease fears after warning that the eurozone recovery depends on action by monetary policymakers.

So Much For Electing An Outsider

During his run for the presidency, Donald Trump took the occasional break from insulting women and minorities to toss off some decent – even exciting – policy ideas. Term limits for congressmen and a ban on politicians becoming lobbyists, for instance, were straight from the Libertarian good-government Christmas list. But best of all was the effective break-up of the big banks through the re-imposition of Glass-Steagall, a law passed during the Great Depression to separate taxpayer-protected commercial banks from free-to-fail investment banks.

Russia Deploys Nuclear Missiles In Retaliation To NATO “Threats”

While the detente between Russia and US president-elect Donald Trump could not have come at a more tense time, the Kremlin appears to be accelerating its head-on collision course with NATO, and as a highly placed defense official said on Monday, Moscow will deploy S-400 surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander systems in the exclave of Kaliningrad in retaliation for NATO deployments, confirming previous media reports of Russian intentions to once again blanket central Europe with potential nuclear ICBM coverage. While Russia has previously said it periodically sends Iskanders to Kaliningrad, until now it has always said these were routine drills. Moscow has not linked the moves explicitly with what it says is a NATO military build-up on Russia’s western borders.

Border Patrol union welcomes Trump’s wall as ‘vital tool’

The National Border Patrol Council has high hopes for President-elect Trump’s border security policies. The union’s president, Brandon Judd, has been advising the Trump transition team. The union has encouraged the building of a border wall and changing enforcement policies put in place in the past four years. San Diego-based Shawn Moran, vice president of the union, said a wall on the border would be a “vital tool,” and it’s difficult to say exactly where along the border a wall is needed.

More Electors Get Death Threats From Hillary Voters

A member of the electoral commission in Texas says his colleagues are getting death threats as angry Hillary supporters ramp up the pressure before electors cast their vote on December 19th. Hillary voters around the country are bombarding electors with emails, some of them threatening, in an effort to force them to vote against the outcome of the presidential election. “At first everyone was kinda enchanted by it. Now all the electors are starting to get beaten down. There are some electors who have been threatened with harm or with death,” Texas elector Alex Kim told NBC 5.

European Union Orders British Press Not To Report when Terrorists Are Muslims

This is the moment where hate speech laws become a greater threat to democracy and freedom of speech than hate speech itself. In France, Muslim terrorists are never Muslim terrorists, but “lunatics,” “maniacs” and “youths”. To attack freedom of the press and freedom of speech is not anti-hate speech; it is submission. By following these recommendations, the British government would place Muslim organizations in a kind of monopoly position: they would become the only source of information about themselves. It is the perfect totalitarian information order. Created to guard against the kind of xenophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda that gave rise to the Holocaust, national hate speech laws have increasingly been invoked to criminalize speech that is merely deemed insulting to one’s race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality. It is disturbing to wonder how long the EU will strongly engage its experts and influence to cut through existing legal obstacles, in a quest to criminalize any type of criticism of Islam, and to submit to the values of jihad.

Trump Announces Policy Plans

President-elect Donald J. Trump vowed in a YouTube video to focus on creating jobs and reducing regulations as soon as he takes office.

Jeff Sessions may prosecute ‘sanctuary cities’ if confirmed as attorney general

Sen. Jeff Sessions is on record saying so-called “sanctuary cities” that protect illegal immigrants should be prosecuted. He himself may get that chance next year. Mr. Sessions is president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next attorney general, and if he’s confirmed, he will mark a 180-degree turn from the Obama administration on a host of issues, but nowhere more so than on immigration, where he’s been the Senate’s leading crackdown proponent.

US Bond Market Liquidity Collapses: “It’s Worse Than Brexit”

Two weeks ago we warned of the “unintended consequences” of Dodd-Frank which are likely to crush bond market liquidity. On the day of Brexit we got a glimpse of what can happen when the world’s most liquid bond market suddenly isn’t and as one veteran bond trader exclaimed today, US Treasury market liquidity is “worse than Brexit.” Following the worst two-week loss for bonds… ever…

San Fran Home Sales Crash To Lowest Level Since 2008 As Pricing Reset Gets Underway

We have frequently written over the past couple of quarters about the bubbly San Francisco housing market that looks set for another epic reversal as home prices have reached staggering new highs just as employment levels seem to be rolling over. With home prices now implying that only 10-20% of residents can afford the “median” priced home, it’s certainly not difficult to understand why demand may be waning. According to HousingWire and a new report from PropertyRadar, home sales in the Bay Area are finally starting to rollover with Q3 YTD volumes down 10.3% YoY, reflecting the fewest number of homes sold over that same time period since 2008. Perhaps even more staggering is that distressed property sales fell 35.7% YoY so far in 2016, to the lowest level since 2001, as “low-priced” inventory dried up and buyers have found it financially impossible to move up to higher price tiers.

In the government’s determined push against the parallel economy, the next step after the disruptive overnight ban on high value notes could be a cap on cash withdrawal, transactions and amounts that can be held by individuals and companies, people in the know said. Recently some senior tax officials and experts were asked their opinion about such a step. The senior government officials seeking feedback or opinion on the issue is one of the main reasons why industry trackers say that such a step could be in the offing, said two people who spoke to ET.

EU Army set to be agreed TODAY – and BRITAIN will foot the £420m-a-year bill

THE EU will today ratify the creation of a continent wide super army that will be up and running next year – and blame BREXIT for its creation. Brussels politicians convened in the French city of Strasbourg to thrash out the plans that will cost taxpayers’ £420m-a-year. They will vote on the issue to establish an “EU-wide system for the coordination of rapid movement of defence forces personnel” across Europe later today. If agreed Britain will not only be forced to foot the bill because it is timetabled for before the triggering of Article 50, but it will also be legally drawn into it.

Sweden leads the race to become cashless society

In 1661, Stockholms Banco, the precursor to the Swedish central bank, issued Europe’s first banknotes, on thick watermarked paper bearing the bank’s seal and eight handwritten signatures. Last year – as Britain did last week – Sweden launched a new series of notes, cheery affairs featuring 20th-century Swedish cultural giants such as Astrid Lindgren, the creator of Pippi Longstocking, Greta Garbo and filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. But like its Nordic neighbours Norway, Denmark and Finland, Sweden is fast becoming an almost entirely cashless society.

Citibank is the first Australian bank to stop taking cash

Up is down and down is up. We are now living in a bizarre era when a bank will refuse to take cash. Citibank Australia has become the first Australian bank to go completely cashless, notifying customers that its branches will no longer handle notes and coins from November 24. “We have seen a steady decline in the demand for cash services in our branches — in fact less than 4% of Citi customers have used this service in the last 12 months,” said Citibank head of retail bank Janine Copelin. “This move to cashless branches reflects Citi’s commitment to digital banking and we are investing in the channels our customers prefer to use.”

Speculators Are Finally Bailing Out Of Gold – And That’s A Good Thing

All this talk of massive new infrastructure spending financed with a tsunami of freshly-minted currency should be lighting a fire under gold. That it hasn’t is a testament to how out-of-whack the precious metals market had gotten during the first six months of this year. As gold rose, the futures contract traders whose games tend to dictate near-term price action had set the metal up for a fall. Specifically, the speculators (who are always wrong at the extremes) were ridiculously long. With the suckers all-in, a big correction was needed to restore balance. But it didn’t come. Several months passed with gold treading water, leading some to wonder if the paper market tail had finally stopped wagging the physical market dog.

Globalists Will Crash Markets and Blame it on Trump-Rob Kirby

Macroeconomic analyst Rob Kirby explains the violent moves in the markets by saying, “We really do not have markets anymore. We have interventions, and we have massive fraud committed on a daily basis in what we call our capital markets. Our capital markets have become nothing more than a crime scene.” Look no further than the gold market on election night. The stock market was 800 points down in the red, and gold was way up in the black. All that reversed in a matter of a few days. How did the powers pull off a stunning reversal, especially with the skyrocketing price of gold? Kirby says, “It was roughly 8,000 metric tons from late election night through Friday. It’s up in the area of three years of global production in the paper markets in the space of three days.”

Trump won the popular vote?

Based on reports in mainstream media, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote for President. The facts, however, indicate otherwise. Before getting into that, we should consider why that is important. The answer is that most people think that whoever gets the most votes is supposed to be the winner. The Constitution, on the other hand, says otherwise. When the Constitution was written, it was understood that the federal government was beholden to the states that created it, not to the general citizenry. Voters chose their state representatives, but the states chose the Senators and the President.

At This Current Pace, A Record-Shattering 2.4 Trillion Dollars Will Be Added To The National Debt This Year

Barack Obama is about to become the 20 trillion dollar man. With less than two months to go in his second term, the U.S. national debt stands less than 150 billion dollars away from the 20 trillion dollar mark. And at the pace that the debt is increasing, it seems almost certain that we will cross 20 trillion dollars before Inauguration Day. After promising us that “deficits are under control”, the federal debt jumped by more than 1.3 trillion dollars last fiscal year, and so far this year it is on pace to rise by a record-shattering 2.4 trillion dollars. This is a recipe for national suicide, and yet it wasn’t even a major issue during the recently concluded presidential campaign. It is really, really hard to spend a trillion dollars. For example, if you were alive when Jesus was born and you had spent a million dollars every single day since that time, you still would not have spent a trillion dollars by now (From year 0 to 2016 at $1m per day is just under $736Bn).

Why We Are Still In ‘The Danger Zone’ Until January 20th, 2017

Donald Trump is not the president yet, and Barack Obama could still do an extraordinary amount of damage during his last two months in the White House. Prior to the election, I described the period of time ending on January 20th as “the danger zone”, and my outlook has not changed just because Donald Trump was victorious on election night. As you will see, the next two months are an absolutely critical time, and if we can get through January 20th without something major happening perhaps we can breathe a little bit easier (at least for a while). On the other hand, the events of the next two months could easily plunge this country into a period of unprecedented chaos. A lot of people are feeling really good about things right now because of Trump’s victory, but now is definitely not a time to relax and let down our guard.

The Drought That Was Prophesied To Hit The Southern United States Is Now Here

A record-setting drought has gripped the southern United States, but most people have no idea that this drought is the fulfillment of a prophecy that was given four years ago. Back in 2008, John Paul Jackson released a DVD entitled “The Perfect Storm” in which he detailed many of the prophetic events that God showed him would soon come to America. In 2012, he released a video update to “The Perfect Storm” that you can view on YouTube right here. In that update, he shared a list of future headlines that God had revealed to him over the years. Some of these headlines have already happened since that time, and now we are watching another be fulfilled right in front of our eyes. Specifically, I am referring to this headline: “Record High Temps Accompany Record Drought Swept South”.

What Donald Trump Just Did Is Going To Have Social Conservatives In A State Of Complete Shock

This is NOT what most social conservatives were expecting. Like millions of other Americans, I greatly celebrated when Donald Trump pulled off a miracle on election night. But within a week of his stunning election victory, many social conservatives already feel like they are being stabbed in the back. On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a post-election interview with Trump in which he explained that his stance on gay marriage is that it is “settled” and that he has no plans to try to overturn the Supreme Court decision legalizing it. According to CNN, this answer “could leave conservatives worried”…

11 Very Depressing Economic Realities That Donald Trump Will Inherit From Barack Obama

It would be a grave mistake to understate the amount of damage that has been done to the U.S. economy over the past eight years. In this article, I am going to share some economic numbers with you that are extremely sobering. Anyone that takes a cold, hard, honest look at the numbers should be able to see that our economy is in terrible shape. Unfortunately, the way that we see things is often clouded by our political views. Up until the election, Democrats were far more likely then Republicans to believe that the economy was improving, but now that is in the process of completely reversing. According to Gallup, only 16 percent of Republicans believed that the economy was getting better before the election, but that number has suddenly jumped to 49 percent after Trump’s election victory. And the percentage of Democrats that believe that the economy is getting better fell from 61 percent to 46 percent after the election.

The Election Of Donald Trump Is Already Having An Enormous Impact On The Economy

The election of Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system. Since November 8th, the Dow has hit a brand new all-time record high, the U.S. dollar has strengthened greatly, and bank stocks are way up. But not all of the economic news is good news. Unlike stocks, bonds have reacted very negatively to Trump’s election victory. The past week has been an absolute bloodbath for bond traders, and as you will see below this is going to have dramatic implications for all U.S. consumers moving forward. Over just a two day period, more than a trillion dollars was wiped out as bond yields spiked all over the globe. As CNN has noted, this type of “violent reaction” in the bond market has only happened three other times within the past ten years…

Britain has passed the ‘most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy’

It’s 2016 going on 1984. The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called “terrifying” and “dangerous”. The new law, dubbed the “snoopers’ charter”, was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government. Four years and a general election later — May is now prime minister — the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses. But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government “document everything we do online”.

Dr. Ron Paul appeared in an RT interview speaking about Donald Trump’s election. He made some curious statements about “neocons” and an infiltration by a “shadow government,” and her warned Trump about placing neoconservatives in his cabinet. Trump is currently considering neocons for at least 5 of his cabinet positions. Many of them have links to Wall Street, specifically Goldman Sachs, and almost all of them are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose honorary chairman is David Rockefeller.

VW cuts 30,000 jobs in emission scandal fallout

Volkswagen (VW) is to cut its workforce by 30,000 over the next five years as it acts to save costs following the diesel emissions scandal. The German carmaker said it was committed to no compulsory redundancies under the union deal, with 23,000 of the positions to go at factories in its home market and the rest in North America and Brazil. VW said the job losses were “socially acceptable” as it prepared to relaunch the brand by 2020 – tainted by the rollout of software in 11 million diesel vehicles that was designed to cheat emission testing.

Two-Thirds Of Workers In Developing Nations To Be Replaced by Robots, Report Warns

An alarming new report from the United Nations is the latest in a litany of studies suggesting that the coming age of automation and workforces dominated by robots will be upon us much faster than previously thought. The U.N. now claims two-thirds of the human labor force in developing nations will be replaced by automation. The U.N. says a Universal Basic Income will be necessary as a stop-gap for the 75% of humans left without work. Anti-Media previously reported on predictions that half the American workforce could be replaced by automation within the next two decades. Another report’s statistics suggested automated software could fleece 1.7 million truckers of their jobs within a decade. The U.N.’s UNCTAD report notes that taken on a global scale, we’re seeing“premature deindustrialization.”

Silver Prices May Rise with Infrastructure Projects

The president of the United Auto Workers said he will sit down and talk with President-Elect Trump to try and crush the North American Free Trade Agreement, describing NAFTA was “a problem.” The union of auto workers is an early advocate for working with Trump to change trade agreements seen as being detrimental to American workers. Other industry organizations are likely to ally themselves with the future president, who made trade a cornerstone of his campaign promise to “Make America Great Again.”

Chelsea Clinton reportedly being groomed for congressional run

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton reportedly is being mooted as a future congressional candidate. The New York Post reported that Clinton, 36, is being eyed to take Rep. Nita Lowey’s place when the 79-year-old incumbent decides to leave the House of Representatives. Lowey represents New York’s 17th District, which covers part of Westchester County, including Bill and Hillary Clinton’s hometown of Chappaqua. The Post reported that the Clintons have purchased the home next door to theirs, in which they plan to install Chelsea, her husband and their two children.

Donald Trump Boosts Europe’s Anti-Establishment Movement

Donald Trump’s electoral victory has come as a shock to Europe’s political and media establishment, which fears that the political sea change underway in the United States will energize populist parties in Europe. Anti-establishment politicians, many of whom are polling well in a number of upcoming European elections, are hoping Trump’s rise will inspire European voters to turn out to vote for them in record numbers. Commenting on Trump’s victory, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, wrote: “America has just liberated itself from political correctness. The American people expressed their desire to remain a free and democratic people. Now it is time for Europe. We can and will do the same!”

China fires its first warning shot, warning iPhone sales will suffer if Trump starts a trade war

Apple iPhones and other U.S. goods could suffer sales hits in China if President-elect Donald Trump goes through with his “naive” plan of slapping a large import tariff on Chinese products, a state-backed newspaper warned on Sunday. During his election campaign this year, Trump spoke of a 45 percent import tariff on all Chinese goods while failing to outline how it would work. Should any such policy come into effect, China will take a “tit-for-tat approach”, according to an opinion piece in the Global Times, a newspaper backed by the Communist party.

Trump Prepares To Label Muslim Brotherhood A ‘Terror Organization’

Last November, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) co-sponsored legislation along with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) demanding that President Obama label the Muslim Brotherhood an official foreign terrorist organization. The Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act prefaces its conclusions with comprehensive research and historical precedent. “Multiple countries have declared the Society of the Muslim Brothers (commonly known as the ‘‘Muslim Brotherhood’’) a terrorist organization or proscribed the group from operating in their countries,” begins the bill. The bill didn’t make it through the winding roads of bureaucracy as a result of the Obama administration’s apparent sympathies for the Islamist group, but now, President-elect Donald Trump’s advisors are vowing to push through that same piece of legislation when the Republican victor assumes the oath of office in January.

As Venezuela’s Currency Loses 40% In One Month, Maduro Dances

The last time we updated on the value – we use the term very loosely in this case – of the Venezuela currency, the Bolivar in the black market, was at the start of November, when one US dollar purchased 1,567 bolivars in the street. Fast forward not even two full weeks later, and the Venezuela currency has now officially crossed the “nice, round number” psychological hyperinflation barrier of 2,000/USD, trading at 2,014 today, crashing by 22% since our last check, and an vomit-inducing 43% in the past month. The exponentially-rising chart below shows what hyperinflation in a destroyed socialist economy looks like.

Two-thirds of the world’s internet users live under government censorship: report

Two-thirds of the world’s internet users live under regimes of government censorship, according to a report released today. The report from Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank, finds that internet freedom across the globe declined for a sixth consecutive year in 2016, as governments cracked down on social media services and messaging apps. The findings are based on an analysis of web freedom in 65 countries, covering 88 percent of the world’s online population. Freedom House ranked China as the worst abuser of internet freedom for the second consecutive year, followed by Syria and Iran. (The report does not include North Korea.) Online freedom in the US increased slightly over the year due to the USA Freedom Act, which limits the bulk collection of metadata carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies.

Online ‘Freedom’ Plunges For 6th Straight Year As Social Media Censorship Grows

Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during anti-government protests. According to the latest Freedom on the Net reports, two-thirds of all internet users live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to censorship.

All Eyes On Argentina As Lithium Boom Takes Shape

Lithium is poised to be the longest-running mining bull market of the century, and independent, junior minors like Millennial Lithium Corp. are having their stocks pushed higher and higher as this market gets ready to explode under a soaring demand and tight supply situation. The disruptive force of lithium in the energy market is unprecedented, with prices tripling this year and the fantastically tight supply prognoses promising explosive profits for new entrants. And the global ground zero is lithium-rich Argentina, where massive resources have combined with a new business-friendly political atmosphere to create a situation in which everyone is talking about a lithium cartel, and the rise of the next energy barons.

China: Trump’s First Crisis?

There is a growing possibility that China will be at the epicentre of President-elect Trump’s first crisis, triggered by concerns over the potential impact of protectionist measures on China’s trade surplus, which currently supports the increasingly fragile financing chains supporting corporate debt that the IMF estimates at around 155% of GDP. Trump’s pledges to impose tariffs of up to 45% on Chinese manufactured goods threatens to drive a significant uptick in the amount of capital flight from the renminbi, while the prospect of measures to change the US tax system to encourage companies to repatriate cash to the are already pulling the dollar higher. At this point the likelihood of Trump actually delivering on his protectionist rhetoric is secondary to the psychological impact on resident corporate and household savers of any potential threat to the current uneasy equilibrium within the Chinese economy.

Wall Or No Wall: Trump Needs The Mexican Oil Industry

Two of Donald Trump’s main pledges during the presidential race were building a wall along the border with Mexico, and making the U.S. energy-independent. Now that the election is over, these issues are coming to the fore. First, the president-elect said that the wall, which he mentioned on the campaign trail and in numerous debates, is still very much on the table, though what type of “wall” that may be is an unknow. Second, he said he planned to start deporting illegal aliens—those with criminal records—which could amount to as many as three million individuals. Despite “The Wall”, the deportation of Mexican citizens, and several grandiose comments about Mexico paying for said wall—not to mention Trump’s proclamation that he would raise import tariffs up to 35 percent on some Mexican products—Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto was among the fi